H. L. Mencken Quotes

Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong.

H. L. Mencken

• Moral

• Previous
• Next

Quotes to Explore

• Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo.

  

  H. G. Wells
  • Moral
  • Jealousy
  • Halo

• Yes, there is a terrible moral in 'Dorian Gray' - a moral which the prurient will not be able to find in it, but it will be revealed to all whose minds are healthy. Is this an artistic error? I fear it is. It is the only error in the book.

  

  Oscar Wilde
  • Book
  • Moral
  • Healthy

• Perhaps misguided moral passion is better than confused indifference.

  

  Iris Murdoch
  • Passion
  • Moral
  • Better

• You can't go around hoping that most people have sterling moral characters. The most you can hope for is that people will pretend that they do.

  

  Fran Lebowitz
  • People
  • Hope
  • Moral

• Leadership means setting a moral tone.

  

  J. B. Pritzker
  • Moral
  • Leadership
  • Tone

• With the monstrous weapons man already has, humanity is in danger of being trapped in this world by its moral adolescents.

  

  Omar N. Bradley
  • World
  • Man
  • Humanity

• Folklore has a moral center to it. Folklore is always, always, always on the side of the underdog, and children have a natural instinct towards justice. They feel indignation at needless cruelty and wistfulness about acts of mercy and kindness.

  

  Laura Amy Schlitz
  • Children
  • Justice
  • Moral

• Having been raised by actors who love moral ambiguity and flawed protagonists, I feel like it's sort of in the blood to want to take it on.

  

  Laura Dern
  • Like
  • Moral
  • Feel

• Enhanced interrogation is not to be considered lightly, but the use of enhanced interrogation techniques does not require moral people to abandon their beliefs. Rather, it is precisely during these difficult times that one's beliefs about life, justice and mercy become indispensible.

  

  Gary Bauer
  • People
  • Life
  • Justice

• Sometimes, in order to follow our moral compass and/or our hearts, we have to make unpopular decisions or stand up for what we believe in.

  

  Tabatha Coffey
  • Up
  • Believe
  • Moral

• In all good westerns, the good guy is always a little bit questionable because he kind-of has to make moral judgments.

  

  Daniel Craig
  • Good
  • Guy
  • Always

• I think if we wish to live in any kind of a moral universe, we must hold the perpetrators of violence responsible for the violence they perpetrate. It's very simple. The criminal is responsible for the crime.

  

  Salman Rushdie
  • Live
  • Wish
  • Simple

• It is in their inherent moral components that recent Western strategies may be deficient. What percentage of the populations in countries engaged in the 14-year effort in Afghanistan could even name the three main Taliban groups with whom their soldiers have been engaged?

  

  H. R. McMaster
  • May
  • Effort
  • Moral

• We need to be clear when we venerate entrepreneurs what we are venerating. They are not moral leaders. If they were moral leaders, they wouldn't be great businessmen.

  

  Malcolm Gladwell
  • Great
  • Moral
  • Need

• Although lynchings have steadily increased in number and barbarity during the last twenty years, there has been no single effort put forth by the many moral and philanthropic forces of the country to put a stop to this wholesale slaughter.

  

  Ida B. Wells
  • Country
  • Stop
  • Single

• When we are confronted with extreme situations, we forget about moral issues; we simply act and must then accept the consequences.

  

  Park Chan-wook
  • Moral
  • Forget
  • Consequences

• Guided by nothing but pop culture values, many children no longer learn how to think about morality and virtue, or to think of them at all. They grow up with no shared moral framework, believing that the highest values are diversity, tolerance and non-judgmentalism.

  

  Gary Bauer
  • Up
  • Children
  • Culture

• Obviously, you don't have to be religious to be moral, and beastly people are sometimes religious.

  

  Gary Hamel
  • People
  • Religious
  • Sometimes

• I try to be an ethical, moral person and a nice person, and I like to have that reflected in my comedy. I'm not a mean comedian, and I don't think that my comedy is mean. I think that for the most part, it's more focused on the diversity that we all handle and try to provide a distraction from the disaster of modern living.

  

  T. J. Miller
  • Nice
  • Comedy
  • Moral

• Philosophers are moral, and poets are picturesque about the country.

  

  Letitia Elizabeth Landon
  • Country
  • Moral

• Affluent enviros are all for wind farms, until one is proposed that might mar the serenity of a sail from the crew-necked precincts near Nantucket Sound. Then it's clean energy for thee, not for me.

  

  Charles Krauthammer
  • Energy
  • Wind
  • Serenity

• The notion of making money by popular work, and then retiring to do good work on the proceeds, is the most familiar of all the devil's traps for artists.

  

  Logan Pearsall Smith
  • Good
  • Work
  • Money

• Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong.

  

  H. L. Mencken
  • Moral